Death of an Orchid Lover (11 page)

Monty the cat materialized in her lap. She stroked him absentmindedly. “When I met him at an orchid club meeting, I thought he was a big bore. Talking about his hybrids all the time. But one day he talked me into coming up and visiting his greenhouse. Then I stayed for dinner. It all happened rather quickly. I think we were both surprised.”

“You do make, keeping up the Neil Simon theme here, an odd couple.”

“You’re speaking of his appearance.”

“He was a fair amount older than you.”

She shook her head. “I know what you mean. He was a big man. Fat.”

“But that didn’t bother you.”

“No. He cared about me.” She pointed at a miniature orchid sitting on a windowsill. It had a dozen tiny orange flowers. “And he showed me beautiful things.”

“Did you ever hear about any business dealings between him and Helen and David Gartner.”

“Helen? And David? Gartner?”

“Yes. You’re friendly with Helen, having dinner with her and all. I thought she might have told you something.”

“No.” She was looking down at Monty, and he up at her with a big contented cat smile. “There’s nothing.” She glanced, too casually, at her watch. “Look what time it’s getting to be. I’ve got a movement class at two.”

“It’s not even one.”

“It’s in Santa Monica. You know what traffic is like.”

She stood, I stood, Monty jumped to the floor. Laura got some clothes from her closet and went into the bathroom, shutting the door partway behind her. “Look on the coffee table,” she called out a moment later.

“What am I looking for?”

“The orchid society’s newletter. It’s cerise. You can’t miss it.”

It was far more elaborate than what my cactus club managed to get out, twelve pages, nice fonts, pretty pictures. “Okay, I’ve got it, now what?”

“There’s a meeting tonight. The address is on the front page. Maybe you can go.”

I found the meeting notice. 857 Iliff Street in Pacific Palisades. One of the cactus people lived on Iliff. Nice area.

“Maybe I can.”

She emerged a minute later wearing her leotard. She saw me looking and smiled. “Not bad, eh?”

“You look great, Laura.”

She threw a sweatshirt around her neck, grabbed her Day-Timer, herded me to the door. As I reached to open it, she put a hand on my arm and spun me half around. “I want you to do something.”

“And what would that be?”

“Come to my scene study class tomorrow.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I thought you might want to get serious about acting again.”

Joe Portugal, hero of several dozen commercials, returning to the stage. What a ridiculous idea. “That sounds good,” I said.

“Wonderful.”

“Where and what time?”

“It’s on Santa Monica Boulevard, at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. That is, it used to be the Richmond Shepard, and that’s how I still think of it. Ten o’clock. You live where again?”

“Culver City.”

“Why don’t you come by at nine-thirty, and we’ll go together.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Co to the meeting tonight, would you?”

“Are you going?”

She shook her head. “There are auditions for a new show at the Tiffany. One of the parts is perfect for me, if you can believe what they say in Drama-Logue.”

“Break a leg.”

“Thanks.”

She gave me an est hug and we went out. She got in her car. I was right about it being the Honda.

I
GOT HOLD OF
G
INA AND CAJOLED HER INTO GOING TO THE
orchid society meeting with me later on. Then I drove over to my father’s house in the Fairfax district. Dad’s housemate Leonard answered the door. He’s legally blind, though slightly sighted. As usual, the blue yarmulke in the middle of his bald spot hung there by some special dispensation from God.

He ushered me in. “Your father’s in the back with Catherine,” he said. “He’s planting posies again. Me, I’m watching MTV. You know that Carmen Electra? She’s a hot one.” He returned to his position six inches in front of the screen, tossed some popcorn in his mouth, fashioned a rusty lascivious smile.

Out back, Catherine, the third member of the household, sat at the teak table reading the paper. She was dark-haired and feisty and looked more than a little like my mother, something my father continually denied. She said hi and went back to the sports page.

Dad patted the soil around his latest patch of impatiens, pushed to his feet, came and gave me a hug. “So,” he said.
“What’s the big special occasion that brings my son to see me?”

“No special occasion, Dad. It usually isn’t.”

“What have you been up to?”

“Not much. I went to a plant show yesterday.”

“A cactus show?”

“Not exactly.”

“What kind, then?”

“An orchid show.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Oh?”

“No, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that my son should be getting interested in orchids at this time. Does it surprise you, Catherine?”

She looked up from the paper. “Stop picking on the boy, Harold.”

“Picking? Who’s picking?”

“What are you getting at, Dad?” I said.

“This.” He plucked the
Times
Metro section from the table, leafed through, pointed at a headline.
DEATH OF ORCHID AUTHORITY STILL A MYSTERY.
Dad cleared his throat and read to us. “‘Police refused to say if actress Laura Astaire, 53, who discovered the body, was a suspect in the murder.’” Fifty-three? Laura was older than I’d thought. “This Laura Astaire, she wouldn’t happen to be someone you know.”

“As a matter of fact, I was just over at her place.”

“Wasn’t nearly getting killed once enough for you?”

“I’m not doing anything dangerous. Just asking a few people a few questions.”

“I’m sure he’s being careful,” Catherine said.

“Please, young lady, this is between my son and me.” Catherine gave him a look and went into the house.

“She’s right, Dad. I’m being very careful.”

“You were being very careful last time. Then the guns came out.”

What could I say? He was right. The guns came out and suddenly my little investigatorial game became a matter of life and death.

“You think you know about murderers,” he said.

Uh-oh. Here it was. I’d broached the subject back when the Brenda business happened, and by unsaid agreement we’d sealed it back up after the crime was solved. “Do you really want to talk about this?”

“I can tell you’re not going to give up this cockamamy thing you have about playing policeman. So I need to remind you about murder again. It is not a game.”

“Don’t go there,” I said. But he did.

I first figured out my father was a criminal when I was ten, after a week of two-a-day
Highway Patrol
episodes. He was involved in truck hijackings, among other things. He was a smalltimer, never making that one big score, not even pulling in enough to keep the family going. But my mother had a part-time job at the May Company, and we got by.

One day in 1966 things went awry. Another gang of bumblers picked the same truck on the same night. There was a scene that, from what I’ve pried out of Dad and Elaine, would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic. When it was over, one of the other band of hijackers lay dead, and my father had the murder weapon in his hand.

He spent thirteen years in prison. When he got out, I was twice as old as when he went in. He came back to our house for a while, before moving up to Fairfax, “where the Jews
are.” As far as I could tell, he’d stayed on the straight and narrow.

“Murderers are dangerous people, Joseph.”

“I know that.”

“Even the ones who are honest all their lives, and then they kill someone, they’re dangerous. Like that—”

“I remember.”

“So you think you’ll just ask your questions, and if one of the people you ask them of is the murderer, they’ll just say, oh, he’s just poking around, he’s harmless, I’ll just let him go on his way.”

“What else am I going to do?”

“Let the police handle it. Trouble is their business.”

It was tempting. Laura would understand if I backed away. She was overwhelmed when she asked me to take a look into things. Not reasoning properly. She didn’t really expect me to uncover anything, at the orchid society meeting that night or anywhere else.

And I’d make my father happy, wouldn’t I? So there was no reason not to drop the whole thing, was there?

“I can’t give it up,” I said. “It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something, that I’m doing something useful instead of sitting on my ass collecting residuals and playing with my cacti.”

He watched my face silently for a good thirty seconds. “I knew you would say that,” he said at last.

I said nothing.

“Do you want a gun?”

“No. What would I do with a gun?”

“You might need a gun. In case by some chance you trip over the actual killer.”

“I don’t want a gun. And if I need a gun, Gina still has hers, and she knows how to use it, which I don’t.”

He stuck out his lower lip. He put it back in place. “You want to help me plant some posies? And after, you can stay for dinner.”

“Posies, yes. Dinner, only if it’s early.”

“Dinner can be early. But tell me why it has to be early.”

“I’ve got to go to Pacific Palisades to an orchid—”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear about it.”

“You just told me to tell you—”

“Joseph, you’re old enough now, you should know when to lie to your father.” He walked toward the house. Just before we got inside, he stopped and turned. “You’ll—”

“Yes, Dad,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”